The guy didn’t so much as shiver.

  The anger drained out of King. He didn’t want to punish this man anymore, didn’t want to rip him limb from limb with soulless fury.

  He just wanted it to be over.

  To make sure he wasn’t imagining it, he said, ‘You’re not saying anything.’

  The merc shrugged and spoke to the wall. ‘Not about to beg. Had to make a call. Made the wrong one.’

  ‘Yeah, you did.’

  You gave a child a traumatic event he’ll remember for the rest of his life.

  King shot the guy through the back of the head, and let the breath in his throat go.

  It was done.

  He’d spotted the two extra sentries buried in the hedges of the villa’s front lawn, but he’d recognised them as amateurs and deemed the situation non-critical. Dumb lookouts could wait. Slater might have been outnumbered in the house, and that’s where the priority lay. So he’d moved laterally behind the row of buildings away from the waterfront and sprinted through their rear yards, ignoring the traumatised cries of guests sheltering from the gunfire on their back porches. He’d circled to the same side passage Wayne had used to escape, and ran into the grizzled vet hunched against a wall, his face bright red, his chest heaving with the exertion of carrying the shields.

  Moving past him, King had said, ‘You hit?’

  ‘No. Couple of close calls though. Easiest hundred k I’ve ever made. Will I be seeing you?’

  ‘No,’ King said. ‘You’re done.’

  He’d gone in a window above a toilet cistern, found himself in an en suite bathroom, and navigated silently through the house from there. He’d come up on the merc holding Caleb from behind.

  Now he cleared the last few rooms he hadn’t yet confirmed were empty, and stood in the last one with sweat pouring off his face.

  He wiped his brow, holstered his gun, and backtracked to the living area. Caleb saw him coming down the hallway. The boy’s feet may as well have been concreted in place. He hadn’t moved since before he’d been used as a human shield. There wasn’t so much as a scratch on him, but that was physical. King could see the disorientation in his eyes.

  King said, ‘Hi. Me again.’

  He could see the boy fighting for control, trying to latch onto something resembling normalcy.

  As King stepped out into the main space, Caleb reached up and wiped a few long locks away from his eyes. An instinctive mechanism. A throwback to simpler times.

  Then the kid, who knew nothing about the world except for what he thought it used to be, reached into his soul and found composure.

  He smiled. ‘Hi.’

  King said, ‘Been eating your vegetables?’

  ‘Yes. What just happened?’

  ‘Something bad. But it’s over.’

  Caleb chewed his bottom lip, then turned to regard Violetta and Alexis, still tied up at the table. ‘Are they your prisoners now? They were nice to me. Please don’t hurt them.’

  King said, ‘They’re my friends.’

  ‘Oh.’

  King went over, removed the duct tape over their mouths, and slashed the cable ties with a knife he fished out of the kitchen drawer. Violetta rubbed her wrists as she got to her feet.

  King said, ‘Did they hurt you?’

  ‘No.’

  Alexis said, ‘There’s another Walcott.’

  King looked across. ‘What?’

  ‘Dylan has a son.’

  Slater appeared at the end of the front hallway. ‘Dylan had a son.’

  88

  No one spoke.

  Caleb furrowed his brow and scratched an itch at the top of his head. ‘What are you all talking about?’

  Violetta went to him. ‘Just adult stuff. Is your head okay?’

  ‘It’s sore. That man pushed that thing into it. Was that a gun?’

  ‘No, no,’ Violetta said. ‘It was a prop. Like a toy. He wasn’t well. He was a sick man. He didn’t mean to do the things he did.’

  ‘Where is he? Where’d he go?’

  King said, ‘He’s under arrest.’

  ‘The police are here?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘So he’s in a room or something,’ Caleb said. ‘Can I talk to him? Ask him why he did that to me? I didn’t like it.’

  King’s heart broke.

  Violetta said, ‘Maybe later. He’s in time out.’

  Caleb rolled his eyes. ‘Do I look like I’m five? I’m seven. I know what time out is. He’s not in time out.’

  Despite the carnage all around them, King managed a smile. ‘Caleb.’

  The boy looked immediately to him.

  King said, ‘You’re not allowed to speak to him. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good lad.’

  When King’s gaze lifted up to Violetta, he saw something in her eyes he’d never seen before. He wasn’t able to articulate what it was. He couldn’t even get close. But he knew it wasn’t bad.

  She said, ‘There’s something I need to tell you. After this is over.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Slater said to her and Alexis, ‘Could you two watch Caleb for a minute? There’s someone we need to speak to.’

  They all turned and saw her there, still sitting on the deck chair, looking out over the body of water.

  Alexis said, ‘Go for it.’

  She and Violetta led Caleb into a spare room, one of the ones without a corpse in it.

  The draperies blew inward with the wind coming off the bay, framing the old woman and the corpse behind her.

  ‘How do you think this is going to go?’ King muttered.

  Slater shrugged. ‘Can’t predict something like this.’

  ‘Anything I should know before we go out there?’

  ‘There’s nothing I know that you don’t.’

  A pause.

  Slater said, ‘Not anymore.’

  They made sure their weapons were out of sight so they could maintain the illusion of respectability, and went outside. Nothing had changed. It was still a beautiful summer’s day. If you could tune out the faint whine of sirens and the crackling of the sedan burning in the entranceway and the distant shouts of horrified resort-goers, it was almost peaceful.

  The old woman stared at the water.

  If it was the wrong side stepping out, she didn’t want to turn and face the bullet.

  King said, ‘Lyla, it’s us.’

  Lyla Barrow turned.

  89

  Somehow, her face was still warm and inviting.

  But her eyes were dead.

  They would be for some time.

  She interlocked her fingers and rested her hands on her top knee. Trying to maintain composure in the face of her world being flipped upside down.

  With no animosity, she said, ‘I’m not going to apologise for what I did.’

  Nearly seventy years into her life, her world had shifted in a heartbeat. She worked diligently at her job in customer service, she tended to her grandson’s every need, she emanated love for her husband of thirty years, she lived out a quiet and peaceful existence she always imagined she’d carry on living until the end of her days. That same placating routine was still possible — King was sure of it. But it wouldn’t be the same.

  Things would never be the same.

  Her husband had turned out to be someone else entirely, and now he was gone from her life, his departure brutal in both the literal and metaphorical sense. The Walcotts were finished, their operation almost dismantled, but that didn’t remove the memories of what had happened. Poor, hapless, innocent gambling victim Teddy Barrow had been pulling the wool over her eyes, secretly plotting to strip his brother of everything the man was worth. And he’d done so, through a ruthless series of executions, using that trademark Walcott soullessness to detach himself from what he was really doing — starting a civil war.

  There’d been blood on Teddy’s hands, just as there’d been blood on Dylan’s hands, even though neither of them were ever involved in the groundwork.

  That’s what you can do with smarts.

  Get others to do your dirty work.

  That was the Walcotts’ biggest achievement in life, and if they had tombstones King figured that quote should go on them.

  Now Slater joined them on the patio. The water didn’t so much as ripple. The bay was quiet, the sirens still distant. Guests in the neighbouring villas had surely fled by now.

  King said, ‘We’re not expecting you to.’

  ‘Are you going to kill me?’ Lyla said, her eyes unmoving, locked on the gun in King’s holster. ‘That would tie everything up neatly. You could move on, leave this all behind, forget about it. You two deserve that. And I deserve it, too.’

  ‘Why would you deserve death?’

  ‘I knew who Dylan was,’ Lyla said. ‘All those months ago when I went to him, and he whispered soothing reassurances in my ear, I could see his soul. There were no depths to his darkness. So I was aware of what he’d do, and I still came here. Even worse — I brought Caleb. My short-sightedness almost got us both killed and if it weren’t for you we’d be at the bottom of this bay behind me. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Don’t punish yourself for instinctive decisions,’ Slater said. ‘You were trying to survive. You went to Dylan precisely because you knew who he was. You knew the influence and power he wielded on this island, and the surrounding ones. If you tried to run on your own, it was only a matter of time before Dylan caught you. You weren’t sure whether he wanted to harm you or not, but if he wanted to he absolutely could, and there’d be nothing you could do to stop him. So you swallowed your pride and came to him for mercy. That’s the hard decision. Running is the easy path, and you were aware enough to know it never would have worked. You’re old, without a bad bone in your body. How could you hide from an all-powerful titan of industry?’

  ‘I knew if I came here Teddy would die,’ Lyla said, the whites of her eyes bloodshot from holding back tears. ‘I assume that’s the case.’

  King said, ‘Yes.’

  She bowed her head.

  ‘It wasn’t us. And it wasn’t Dylan.’

  That made her look back up.

  She said, ‘What happened?’

  Then her face twisted.

  All that effort stopping the tears from coming gave way to neurasthenia, and the emotional turbulence rattled her to the core. She said, ‘Did he do it himself?’

  ‘Yes,’ King said. ‘But not deliberately.’

  She frowned through the tears.

  Slater said, ‘We tried to stop him from causing any further damage to himself or his family — to you, or Caleb, or even Dylan. He ran from us. He tripped and fell and hit his head. As quick as that. It was painless.’

  ‘Did you threaten him?’ Lyla asked. ‘Was he running out of fear?’

  ‘No,’ Slater said. ‘He ran out of greed. It was Theodore Walcott who ran.’

  With unbelievable composure Lyla took a deep breath and said, ‘Maybe that was what was meant to happen, then. I certainly could never have faced him again.’

  ‘He still loved you,’ King said. ‘He loved Caleb. That wasn’t a ruse.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But he was blind to the consequences of his own actions. How many men did he admit to killing? Seven? Like it was nothing.’

  ‘He didn’t do it with his own hands,’ Slater said. ‘He used others.’

  ‘That’s worse,’ she said. ‘That means he was spineless.’

  Slater agreed, but he’d wanted her to reach that conclusion on her own.

  There’d been a brief lull in her emotions as she processed what had happened, but now it sunk home and the tears flowed once more.

  Through them she whispered, ‘I thought he was a good man.’

  ‘Part of him was,’ King said. ‘Part of him wasn’t. That’s the same in everyone. Only to different degrees.’

  ‘That man I loved didn’t exist.’

  ‘Yes he did. But another part of him was lying dormant.’

  ‘If I hadn’t come here, he never would have needed to run…’

  Slater said, ‘All you did was expedite the process. Those brothers were bound to destroy each other eventually. You did a good thing, for the right reasons, and it ended up encouraging them both to do what they were going to do all along. You shouldn’t feel any shame in that.’

  ‘How could I not?’

  ‘I said you shouldn’t, but you will. It’s something you’ll have to deal with. But you’ll make it out of the woods. And you’ll raise Caleb right.’

  She said, ‘How? Look at this.’

  She cast a hand in a ninety-degree arc to encompass the villa, gesturing to all the bodies she couldn’t see but that she knew were out there.

  ‘What about it?’ King said.

  ‘I’m at a crime scene. A brutal crime scene. The police will be here soon. How will I ever be forgiven?’

  ‘By coming with us. We’ll put you on a flight out of here and it’ll be like you were never involved.’

  ‘That’s illegal.’

  ‘Yes,’ Slater said. ‘Sometimes legality and justice don’t go hand in hand.’

  ‘Story of our lives,’ King said.

  They thought there’d be a period of convincing, but she rose off the chair on shaky legs. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  She said, ‘That boy is not losing me. I can ignore what I’m feeling until we’re clear of this. I don’t have much strength but I have that much at least.’

  She rounded the table and reached out for their hands.

  They each took one to support her. Her grip was coarse from old skin, but warm and reassuring beneath.

  She let them lead her out of the villa, and out of the lives of the Walcotts.

  90

  They all flew off Grand Bahama together, long before investigators within the local police department could dissect the trail of destruction left behind.

  Before they had any hope of identifying culprits.

  Still, it was prudent to leave now.

  King assumed there’d be an island-wide lockdown when the extent of the death toll was uncovered. Right now there were mobsters and racketeers and loan sharks and mercenaries and criminals lying dead across the bays and reefs, deep in the shadows of abandoned buildings and parking lots and unpaved trails. Some had been killed by Theodore, some by Dylan, some by Kane, and a decent chunk by the foursome sitting across one of the rows on the small seaplane. But when the demise of the Walcotts came to light, there’d be a staggering shift in the power dynamic.

  King tried not to think about that.

  It was the same as Saddam Hussein’s demise, the same as Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán’s imprisonment. Sure, Dylan Walcott was a reputable member of the community, a titan with political ties and obscene power, but the same was true for the two aforementioned individuals. They were all respected, and they were all invulnerable until they weren’t. Then their absence created a power vacuum, all that wealth and fortune and power just ripe for the taking, and when King thought about it too hard he came to the conclusion that it would never end. There would always be a subsection of society who leapt on the opportunity for quick results, even if that meant destroying their own soul.

  It was sad to consider, but Walcott’s death hadn’t been for nothing.

  Examples had been made.

  Messages had been sent.

  You want this life, this is where you end up…

  Although who would listen?

  King figured he’d simply have to teach them the same lesson, whoever they were.

  Whichever unfortunate soul decided to pick up the pieces of Walcott’s empire.

  The civilian flight to Nassau took forty-five minutes. It landed at Lynden Pindling International Airport and the passengers filed out in single file, descending the steps and crossing the tarmac to the terminal. Lyla led Caleb with a hand on his shoulder. King, Slater, Violetta and Alexis brought up the rear, keeping their distance out of respect.

  Slater could see subtle changes in Lyla’s behaviour. She gazed at the passengers streaming past for far too long, as if befuddled by them. He knew exactly what she was going through. After experiencing death up close, it’s surreal and odd to see stress-free civilians going about their lives without a care in the world. Did they not know the depths of human depravity? Did they not understand what happens under the surface of an orderly society?

  No, they didn’t.

  And that was a good thing.

  Slater hung back, letting Lyla handle the dissociation and detachment on her own. She would come out the other side eventually, and when she did she’d either be weaker or stronger. Despairing of what people are capable of, or relishing the strength of the human spirit in the face of evil.

  For Slater, it was always a bit of both.

  In the terminal, they collected their bags. Back in Freeport, Lyla and Caleb had fussed about in their home for fifteen minutes while everyone else waited out front, keeping guard. But no one came for them. Walcott’s forces had been razed to the ground. Lyla and Caleb re-emerged with two suitcases stuffed to the brim, containing all their treasures and worldly possessions, and then they’d been off.

  Now, Lyla clutched her faded tan suitcase by the handle and said, ‘What happens now?’

  King handed her a smartphone he’d bought en route to Grand Bahama International Airport. He’d spent most of the short flight loading the device with everything she’d need.

  Lyla turned it over in her hand. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Your new phone.’

  ‘I have a phone.’

  ‘Get rid of it. Start fresh with this one. There’s a banking application installed, connected to an account with five hundred thousand U.S. dollars sitting in it. The login details are in the notes application. It’s all yours.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘It’s not payment to look the other way. And it’s not for you. It’s for Caleb. Give him a life. Give him a proper education. Help him move on from these last few turbulent days. Help him understand.’